Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the outcomes for people discharged from mental health wards.

No specific assessment has been made. We are working with the National Health Service to improve inpatient mental health care and subsequent patient outcomes. The NHS Long Term Plan commits to expanding and transforming NHS mental health services by March 2024, including those provided in an inpatient setting.

Where the quality or safety of inpatient care falls short, it is important that we learn from any mistakes to improve care across the NHS and protect patients in the future. This is why we have conducted a rapid review into mental health inpatient settings, with a specific focus on how we use data and evidence, including complaints, feedback and whistleblowing alerts, to identify risks to safety and bring about improvements to outcome-based, therapeutic care. The review’s report is expected to be published shortly.

NHS England has also established a three-year quality transformation programme, which seeks to tackle the root causes of unsafe, poor-quality inpatient care in mental health, learning disability and autism settings.